Laurent Bossavit's weblog caught my eye in a reference to software as communication. One of his more recent entries, Activating Attention discusses how what we think of as everyday “coincidences” are in fact instance of mental set at work.
So, a software developer, by having a certain framework, is more apt to find bugs, for example. I should look more at the biological underpinings, although patterning is probably the most likely cause, as humans are adept at finding patterns, even where none exist. That may explain why walking away from a problem for only a minute or two and then returning works well (a mental set refresh button?). Suddenly the solution is obvious.
But slightly more seriously, the persistance of habit (as I call it) is a subject I'm deeply interested in, both for practical and theoretical reasons. Practical, because as a writer and editor, it's much easier to edit someone else's copy than my own. It takes conscious effort to disengage my expectations and look at what I've written clearly: both to see what's actually on the page as opposed to what I expect to see, and to see and evaluate options that as a writer I closed off by making a decision.
My theoretical interest because the persistance of habit is mechanism by which social structures are created and maintained. It's also, along with patterning, the underpinning of all arts. To take a local example: poetic meter works by building an expectation of whatever linguistic feature is being measured, which persists even when the poet deviates from the theoretical model. All "form" is expectation.
The flip side of the persistance of habit is the breaking of it — an enlightenment, on any scale from a small lightbulb over the head to a lifeshifting insight that shatters the mental framework.
---L.
Posted by: LNH on June 18, 2003 11:25 AM(Needless to say, I wrote that while Not Looking at a half-inch high stack of copyediting on my desk.)
Posted by: LNH on June 18, 2003 11:48 AMThis discussion has been closed. No more comments may be added.